Social Media Marketing For Small Business

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from small business owners about learning how to market their business using social media. Social media, if used correctly could be a game changer when it comes to your revenue. You won’t learn everything you need to know about social media marketing for small business; this blog post will get you up to speed and allow you to hit the ground running. Remember, just like anything that is worth doing; You have to practice any new skills learned until you are proficient. I will try to cover as much as possible if you have any lingering questions after reading. Shoot me an email; I’d be happy to help you out.

Social Media Marketing For Small Business Tips

So you’ve created the perfect website, it’s your new cash cow. I will be honest unless you have targeted traffic coming to your site on a daily basis, you won’t grow your business with just a website. It’s hard to get ranked in Google for local and search terms related to your line of business. Every company should have some Search engine optimization plan of attack, but what do you do while you’re waiting for good ole google to rank your site? You need to take some time and build out all of your social media small business profiles. Gaining traction on social media is not a quick process, but it’s vital. So if you haven’t done that yet, go get it done.

So What Exactly Is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing consists of engaging with people who have expressed interest in your brand or business on social sites. Sounds pretty easy right? Based on my experience, most of the small business owners are either doing it wrong or getting less than desirable results. If someone takes the time to post a question on your facebook page, you need to take the time to answer it. If you expect someone to read your blog post titled “How To Make Money Blogging“, you should be willing to keep comments turned on and participant in the conversation. You must have an active presence on every social media site that you plan to market your small business. So you if you have a facebook page, you need to post more than once a week. Try to post something of value before you start trying to sell products to customers. I always stick to this rule, for every four posts that I create, three of them have to be something that brings value to the table. Being active also means interacting with potential clients. Try joining some facebook groups that are related to your industry, answer questions and get to know their wants and needs. When you’re on Instagram, don’t just focus on posting pictures. Social media marketing for small business on Instagram includes commenting on a post that has your hashtags in them. I’m a fan of Gary Vee he has an excellent tactic for building a following on Instagram. It goes like this, first find ten different hashtags related to your industry and do a search on the gram for each one. You’re going to comment on the top 10 post for each of your hashtags. I’m not talking one-word spam bull shit. I want you to look at the picture and honestly say something of value. Try this for 30 days straight, watch how fast your followers stack up. Don’ t just assume you need to pay a small business social media marketing company big bucks to stand out. It’s all up to you and how many hours you’re willing to interact with your audience.

Social Media Marketing For Small Business Statistics You Need To Know For 2018

Social media has become one of the most critical lifelines for brick and mortar and online businesses. The world of social networks can be a complicated place if you’re not equipped with the correct knowledge. Let’s go over some critical numbers before we continue on.

Adults age 18-34 are the group that is most likely to follow a company’s brand on social media. (The Source of Truth: MarketingSherpa) You should be aware of the underlying demographics of your target market. Knowing which one is most likely to follow, allows you to focus specific efforts on that group.
Did you know that 71% of consumers who have had a good or excellent experience with your band are more likely to recommend your services to others (The Source Of Truth: Ambassador ) Ok, so that’s more than half, so you need to be on point at all times.
2.56 billion social media users around the world, that’s a staggering 34% penetration globally. Over 1 million new users join social media site every day. (The Source Of Truth: We Are Social) As a business this is very good, you can still compete with the big boys, the market is enormous and growing every day.
In 2016 there were over 4.4 million videos uploaded to Facebook for viewing. These videos generated over 199 billion views. (The Source Of Truth: ReelSEO) So I suggest you pull back on the writing and start spending some time creating videos around your company’s industry.

Ok, so I could bore you with 100 other statistics, I won’t. I’m going to cover the essential details for the most popular social networks for social media marketing. Just the basics, we can touch on the more advanced topics in another post.

Social Media Marketing For Small Business On Facebook

Let’s face it; Facebook takes up a lot of time for a lot of people, every freaking day. It’s addictive; it’s a big ass distraction. Us marketers love Facebook; the addiction pays our bills. Your first step is to create a facebook page. Pages allow your business to start getting your brand in front of interested buyers. As of the third quarter of 2017, Facebook currently has 2.07 billion monthly active users. You can’t tell me that your whole buyer demographic is not apart of that number. FYI If you are just getting started with Facebook ads, I have an article that will show you the ropes. President Barack Obama’s Facebook page is not too shabby; I love how the about me page features links to relevant websites. If you attract the right followers to your page, your website’s traffic will most likely double. Once you create a page, you’ve got a couple of different options to promote it. So the most obvious way would be to place links on your website, business card, email signature, and pretty much every piece of content you put in front of your audience. I always choose a different route, Facebook ads. I can use Facebook’s advanced targeting to put my page in front of my target audience. This method requires you to know your buyer persona, if you’re not familiar with that, google it. Example, you choose females age 20-35, married, kids, homeowner, fitness, this could be an excellent audience to market your gym or personal training business. With Facebook ads, you can start out with as little as 5 dollars per day if you’re going for likes to a business page. I’ve been able to get my cost per like down to 15 cents; this requires that your ad copy and image are optimized for the audience.

Social Media Marketing For Small Business With Facebook Groups

Ok so this is a new area for me, I want to share what I’ve learned so far with my readers. Think of Facebook groups as Facebook pages on steroids. With groups, you can interact with your customer on a whole different level. You get to see them communicate with each other; this could tell you a lot about your buyer persona. Maybe you got wrong; this gives you the ability to ask your customers what they want. So let’s say you run an e-commerce store selling Unicorn items. You start your group and name it Beautiful Unicorn Stuff, something of that nature. So you have no members in your group yet, what are you waiting for, get some! Your strategy should be to join as many groups that are related to the unicorn niche. Get in there and offer some value, you need to answer some questions and contribute to the community. So a week or two goes by, and you’re ready to start marketing your products. Reach out to the group administrator and let them know that you have a fantastic offer for the group etc. If they give permission, take full advantage. Don’t just send traffic to your product pages, the goal here is to get an email so you can add them to your email list. Believe or not, people take those free quizzes that you often see on the internet. Send the members to a survey to test how high their unicorn something ability is. You get my drift right? You want to sign up for at least 50 groups; not all administrators are going to let you post an offer in their Facebook group. You have to be pretty damn persistent, don’t give up after a couple of days posting in groups. Come back, try again. If you have a funnel, try and get them through it and convert some of these users into paying customers. In conclusion, social media marketing for small business is a critical strategy that every business should try and undertake. There will be more post in the future. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter.